Pages

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Dan Reeder is the Nashville Scene's Critics' Pick for 5.10.07

Dan Reeder will be performing live tonight at the Basement in Nashville @ 9pm. Here's what the Nashville Scene's Jack Silverman had to say about Dan Reeder:

If Salvador Dali were reborn as a folkie, he'd be Dan Reeder. Playing oddball homemade instruments (his guitar looks like it was pulled out of a Picasso painting) and singing songs that are at once quaint, absurd, vulgar and insightful, Reeder is so his own man that all those hipster freak-folk wankers (you know who you are) look positively prosaic in comparison. Unlike the many singer-songwriters whose aspirations to profundity are ultimately a joke, Reeder aspires to be a joker, yet hidden meanings seem to lurk just below the surface of his nonsense rhymes, playfully eluding your grasp. Lines such as "When I say 'Vietnam' it sounds just like 'Coca Cola,' / I believe most anything as long as it's not real," from the song "Clean Elvis" feel pregnant with mystery, despite the almost Weird Al goofiness and deadpan delivery. Reeder shares warts-and-all, down-home style with his Oh Boy labelmates John Prine and Kris Kristofferson, but while they're spinning yarns about down-and-out characters, he's singing about waiting 37 years for a cappuccino or, on songs such as "I Drink Beer" and "Pussy Titty", waxing philosophical. And he's a terrific visual artist - anyone who makes a painting with "ART PUSSIES FEAR THIS PICTURE" scrawled across it clearly has a worldview we can get behind. - Jack Silverman